When folks jump on Facebook or Reddit to ask about the best synths to use for Trance, it often seems like there’s only 3 or 4 names that ever come up. Spire. Sylenth1. Virus TI (or OsTIrus, now). JP-8000 (or JE-8086, as of December 2025). The occasional mention of Diva. Lots of digital polyphonic VST plugins with some version of a SuperSaw baked into the architecture somewhere in the signal path.
And following that same thread, an almost equal number of Trance fans (especially the older ones) complain that everything sounds the same, and the life has gone out of modern Trance. While I fundamentally disagree with that premise, I do think there is something to the idea that Sameness has taken over the sound. Some folks would say the genre has become trapped in its own tropes and experimentation and deviation from the standard SuperSaws & Arpeggios ends in apathy or punishment from the scene, but I also don’t agree with that premise.
A lot of great tunes from the 90s on to the mid-2010s did not use those sounds, or they weren’t the primary focus, and those sounds had a lot of character.
And with the massive explosion in interest of analog synths that has happened since the 2010s, I think now is the perfect time for Trance artists to veer away from the typical SuperSaw sound, and start incorporating a little analog character and unpredictability into their mixes.
It’s true that most Trance producers avoid Analog synths. Many are monophonic, and the ones that aren’t, tend to be expensive, and have limited polyphony compared to their plugin cousins.
But there are still many places where Analog synths can serve useful secondary, and even central roles in big Trance anthems.
Where Analog Fits In The Mix
The most obvious example is what most folks associate Analog synths with… bassline duties. And Analog is great for basslines. Sometimes too great.
Take for example, these 2 songs. On Heaven, Wavetraxx and I used the Prophet Rev2 for a midrange bass layer, to add extra character to the low end. The rest of the song is digital, but DCO Analog sound still occupies a supporting role in the mix, and lends the character extra depth. The bass sound didn’t get used for the entire sub + midrange layer because the saturation baked into the sound was too heavy for the mix, and without lopassing to cut the lows and some lo-mids out of the sound, it would have clashed with the kick. But hipassed and notched tastefully, it sat tidily on top of the sub bass, and added an extra dimension to the music that makes it feel more organic.